NASA scientists took time on Wednesday, Nov. 28, to soothe 2012 doomsday fears, warning against the dark side of Mayan apocalypse rumors — frightened children and suicidal teens who truly fear the world may come to an end Dec. 21.

These fears are based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar. On the 21st, the date of the winter solstice, a calendar cycle called the 13th b'ak'tun comes to an end. Although Maya scholars agree that the ancient Maya would not have seen this day as apocalyptic, rumors have spread that a cosmic event may end life on Earth on that day.

Thus NASA's involvement. The space agency maintains a 2012 information page debunking popular Mayan apocalypse rumors, such as the idea that a rogue planet will hit Earth on Dec. 21, killing everyone. (In fact, astronomers are quite good at detecting near-Earth objects, and any wandering planet scheduled to collide with Earth in three weeks would be the brightest object in the sky behind the sun and moon by now.)

"There is no true issue here," David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, said during a NASA Google+ Hangout event. "This is just a manufactured fantasy."

"I think it's evil for people to propagate rumors on the Internet to frighten children," Morrison said.

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I didn't know people did that to frighten children. Hmmm... perhaps I should hide my copy of the original (translated to english, of course) Grimm's Fairy Tales. Those are pretty horrific. Shoot, even Mrs. Piggle Wiggle has some scary stories.

people seem to forget the fact that that date on the mayan calendar would have technically happened around March of this year because of leap year that we added in that the mayans didn't do on their calendar